One guesses Neill might know, given that he co-starred with Scott Thomas
in 1998's The Horse Whisperer (although he did not appear in the
Oscar-nominated 2004 Sideways, which established Pinot Noir as the grail
of grapes to a global audience). Neill, who has more than 60 movie
credits under his belt and who recently appeared on TV as Cardinal
Wolsey in Showtime's The Tudors, leads something of a double life. Back
in his native New Zealand, this son of three generations of importers of
French vintages planted his first five acres (two hectares) of grapes in
1993. Neill has poured heart and soul not only into such successes as
The Piano and the Jurassic Park movies but also into the alluvial-schist
soil of the South Island of New Zealand, where his great-grandfather
settled in 1859 and where Neill helms Two Paddocks, which is dedicated
to the quest for what he calls "the seductive Pinot Noir."

Those who recall the debates of Miles and Maya in Sideways (which,
winemakers concur, has had a considerable influence on the popularity of
Pinot) might remember that Pinot Noir can be unpredictable yet
potentially spectacular. Part of the appeal lies in the fact that the
vines thrive only on such steep slopes as Burgundy's 2-mile-wide (3 1/2
km), 30-mile-long (50 km) stretch of Côte d'Or (Burgundy and Pinot Noir
are synonymous) and in just a few rocky pockets in such places as
Australia, Canada, South America and Europe, along with Oregon's
Willamette Valley and the coolest spots in California. As for New
Zealand's Central Otago Pinots, the pioneers who planted this epic
landscape with vines in the 1970s were deemed madmen.

With its craggy peaks and glacial valleys, Central Otago would appear to
be the last place you could grow grapes. Located below the 45th parallel
near the tip of New Zealand's South Island and with elevations of 650 to
1,475 ft. (200 to 450 m) above sea level, this is extreme-sports
country. The world's top snowboarders compete on mountains buffeted by
winds from Antarctica. In fact, Pinot vines don't mind a blanket of snow
as long as summer temperatures are warm enough for the slow ripening
needed for intense flavors and complexities to develop. "Pinot Noir is
not one of those grunty, stand-a-spoon-up-in-it wines. It's fickle and
voluptuous and complex," says Neill. "People say there's a lot of wine
in the world, but there's not a lot of Pinot Noir, and admirers are
looking for regional differences."

Worldwide, Pinot Noir's uniqueness is that it seems to carry in the most
pronounced way the taste of the land from which it hails. (The French
refer to this as the goût de terroir.) "Pinot from here does seem to
reflect the mystery of this place," says Neill, whose merchant
great-grandfather arrived during Otago's gold rush and grew wealthy from
selling supplies, including alcohol, to miners. "So your family have
been peddling hooch around here for 150 years," jokes Peren, who hails
from such quintessentially Kiwi stock  as New Zealanders would call
it  that his grandfather even had a breed of sheep named after him.
Peren launched the Peregrine Wines label in 1998 in partnership with
oenophile oncologist Murray Brennan of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer
Center in New York City. (Brennan visits for vacations.) Peren's
connection with the land that Peregrine has under vine comes through his
wife's grandfather, who won a small plot in a card game. The Peren
family also has a single-vineyard Pinot Noir called Two Sisters.

A great Pinot may taste heavenly, but it's a devil of a job to get it
into your glass. Birds love the sugar-laden grapes (hence the surreal
sight in early fall in Central Otago of what appear to be snow-filled
valleys, which are in fact a vast expanse of white nets). If the grapes
aren't picked exactly as they reach maturity, the thin-skinned berries
shrivel on the vines  which, because they thrive on steep slopes, demand
that harvesting be done by hand. Yields are low  about 2 tons per acre
(5 metric tons per hectare, which translates into about 350 cases of
wine). Sauvignon Blanc vines would yield three times as much. Add to
that the risk that the fruit will be unstable during the fermenting
process (although we'll forgo the science lesson on the effect of
Pinot's native yeasts and 18 amino acids).

But the greatest enemy of all needs just one night to destroy
everything. While vines don't mind snow, grapes hate frost, and the only
reliable way to stop cold air from killing a crop is expensive and
terrifying. Neill and Peren, along with the other winemakers in a region
that features such wine stars as Felton Road and the well-named Mt.
Difficulty, are all too familiar with frost watch, which means
helicopter flying at night. To keep the air moving, squadrons of
choppers fly low, a maneuver rendered yet more perilous because the
valleys are crisscrossed with electricity cables. "It scares the hell
out of me," Neill admits. "We're desperate to find an alternative. We do
use windmills too, but the problem is, on one night your windmill might
not be in the right place."

It was the Sauvignon Blancs of the Marlborough region farther to the
north  including Cloudy Bay, now owned by French luxury group Moët
Hennessy Louis Vuitton  that really put New Zealand wines on the map.
Yet plenty of wine connoisseurs remained skeptical about Central Otago
Pinot Noir. Neill makes sure to credit his mentors: the late Rolfe Mills
of Rippon winery, who started to plant in 1976, and Alan Brady, who
today co-helms a two-man boutique winery called Mount Edward. "It's a
small region, and we cooperate with each other," says Neill. "Everyone
helps everyone else and pools their knowledge."

Rippon, now operated by Rolfe's son Nick Mills, is also significant
because, situated on the banks of Lake Wanaka, it has what must surely
be the most spectacular cellar-door point of sale on earth, attracting
some 15,000 wine tourists a year. Peregrine Wines, too, has a robust
cellar-door business, as do other wineries in Central Otago. But don't
turn up at Two Paddocks. "We discourage it by being hard to find,
because I like wandering around with my shirt off," says Neill, who
prefers to drum up sales via a terse and amusing blog.

As for how he splits his time, Neill notes that both his professions are
"very chancy and very weather dependent." But wine can be much harder
work. "I certainly wouldn't turn down a great acting gig so I could be
on my hands and knees putting grapes in a bucket," he says with a laugh.